My younger
brother, Edd, recently posted in his blog an article titled “What is Truth”
(see here). As he noted when posting it,
“Warning: it is long and it gets political”, and he is quite accurate. But
there were several thoughts that occurred to me as I read it (and yes, I read
the whole thing – multiple times). I’ve been mulling over these thoughts for
the past several days and would like to share them here. This posting will also
be long and get somewhat political, but not quite to the extent of my brother’s
post.
How
do we Communicate?
My brother
spent the first part of his post exploring the concept of absolute truth – with
references to works by Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) (see bio). Schaeffer
developed the term “true truth” to capture the essence of what he meant. Since
Schaeffer was born and got his seminary education not far from where I was
living beginning in 1975, I was very familiar with his works and had read many
of them myself. But initially I did not grasp well what he was teaching.
Nonetheless, when he was giving a lecture at a school not far from us, my wife
and I went to hear him in person.
I had
grown up knowing the 7% rule – namely that only 7% of what we communicate is in
the words we use. (This is based on a study which noted that our communication
is 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal, and 7% words only (see one
explanation here). While there have been other studies since then, the
point is that our words constitute only a fraction of what we communicate. In
written communication we often use other literary devices to enhance our
communication – things like differing fonts or font sizes variation, bolding,
underlining, etc.
But
Schaeffer’s books did not come across very well. And one of his major works,
the film version of How shall we then live?, was just in the process of
being developed from the written version which had been published in 1976.
When I
heard Schaeffer in person in the late 1970s, it suddenly occurred to me what my
problem was. Apparently for many of his books, Schaeffer had presented the
material first as a speech. This speech had then been recorded and the print version
was developed by transcribing the exact words that he had spoken, but the other
literary devices had not been added in, so that only the words remained. Thus,
in the publication process, and using the above percents, they had removed over
90% of that which he had communicated and published the verbal only portion of
7%! But now, knowing what Schaeffer sounded like from the hour or so I heard
him in person, and understanding how he communicated, I could go back through
those books and mentally add back in the nonverbal and vocal constructs as I re-read
them. It was a real “ah ha” moment for me.
Communication
in a Cultural Context
One of the
items that’s not mentioned in the above 55/38/7 model is the impact of
different cultures. My brother and I had different experiences here. He and his
wife lived and worked in Haiti for several years at the beginning of their
marriage. They also lived and worked in Thailand for the last dozen years of
their working life, and were located in different areas of the country for each
term of their missionary service. As such they took formal language training as
well as lived it every day. Thus, they are both trilingual (which I am not).
I had a
very different experience in that I spent the last several years of my work as
a Business Analyst who served a number of different countries. So, rather than
learn primarily one foreign language, I needed to learn just a handful of words
in each of several languages. So, I could say the equivalent of “hello”, “goodbye”,
and “thank you” but not much else. But I also learned several other non-verbal
aspects of communication – things like the proper method of greeting, which
hand to use for eating (and which utensils), the impact of the primary religion
on culture and any “no no’s” to avoid.
I’d like
to close this section with two examples – one with a poor ending, and one with
a good ending.
A poor
ending – One year,
because of all the technology changes happening withing the company, management
decided that it would be a good idea to bring all the IT support personnel from
around the world to our headquarters where we could instruct all of them at the
same time. There were representatives from about a dozen countries. As the business
analyst for many of these countries, I was also invited to attend. We would
then have a series of the IT experts in each of these new technologies make a
presentation and allow those in the room to ask questions to be sure that
everyone left with a common understanding.
Since I
was not in charge of the agenda and did not even know who would be leading each
session, I was not able to give any cultural advice to them in advance. So I
simply sat in the back of the room, listened in, and observed the
representatives from each country. Since a requirement to work for the company
was that everyone communicated in English, the presenters thought that they
could just speak in English and everyone would understand. But they did not
appreciate that having a common language only addresses the 7% of communication
being verbal.
It was a
disaster! A measure of proficiency in the US is that the person can speak as
fast as they can. But this does not take into account that a listener for whom
English is a second language needs time to hear (in English), translate the
individual words (which may not easily translate into their primary language),
then understand the translated result. Thus, the US-based “experts” spoke much
too fast and the non-US-based IT folks were quickly overwhelmed. Sitting in the
back of the room I could easily see this as all those non-US-based folks were
glancing at each other, shrugging their shoulders (or the equivalent in their
culture), and just letting all the new words pass them by. Since many of them
also came from cultures where to criticize someone is to insult them, or even
to ask a question is inappropriate, if the speaker paused and asked, “any
questions?” he/she was met with silence and then just continued rambling on.
After seeing this in the first few speakers, I tried to get subsequent speakers
to slow down, but that didn’t register. I ended up having to have one-on-one
meetings with many of the non-US folks to try and fill in the gaps.
A good
ending – Sometimes
a good interchange does not even involve any exchange of words at all. On one
of my visits to Brazil, I was there for several days and my visit turned out to
be over the time when they celebrated Christmas. Thus, I was invited to attend
the office get-together after work one day. They had rented out a local bar –
both the bar in the front room and the back room where the tables were all
pushed to one side. Although many in the office spoke English, this was an
after-work party and so everyone was using their primary language – Portuguese.
I was in the front bar room (drinking a non-alcoholic beverage) and was
speaking with probably the best English speaker from the office – the executive
secretary of the Managing Director. I don’t remember the content of our
interaction at the time, but it was fairly innocuous. Out of the corner of my
eye I saw a late comer entering from the street. She was one of the younger
ladies from the office.
She was
headed for the back room but stopped by each person/couple standing at the bar
to exchange greetings. This had been part of my cultural investigation before
the trip, so when she reached where I was standing, I turned, and without any
words being exchanged, touched my cheek to the cheek that she proffered and “kissed
the air”. (FYI, the number of cheek touches and kisses vary by country, with
some being one cheek, some doing one on each side, and some even three kisses –
left-right-left”.) She then moved along to the next person standing by the bar.
When I
turned back to the executive secretary, she was smiling broadly and said to me,
“you know our customs!” The whole tone of our conversation then changed. I had
not said anything, but I had greeted this girl from the office with a
culturally appropriate kiss instead of sticking out my hand for a handshake
(the typical US greeting). But as a result, my whole interaction with the
executive secretary of the Managing Director was impacted. And since she was
the gate-keeper to the Managing Director it also had a positive impact on my
access to him as I continued supporting the IT connections in that country. And
all from one non-verbal interaction with a lady from the office whose name I didn’t
even know.
Impact
on our Church
Before I
get to Political Implications, which my brother covered quite well, I’d like to
explore the cultural issues in the context of our church. As a basis, I think
it’s appropriate to refer to Acts 1:8 (ESV). The final command of Christ before
he departed earth were his instructions to his disciples “… you will be my
witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the
earth.” Since our church is not in Jerusalem, a way of categorizing these is “within
the church, around the church, and around the world. So, how is the church I
attend doing in each of these spheres?
Within
the church – Most
of the churches around us tend to be composed of similar people. There are
churches that are all/mostly white, all/mostly black, mostly old, etc. But the
same cannot be said of our church. While it has its roots in the German
Mennonite community of the early 1700s, it is anything but monolithic. The
senior pastor is black, the sermon notes are available in both English and
Spanish, as are the placards in the downstairs hall. We host an Arabic-speaking
congregation who meet every Sunday afternoon and have periodic joint services
with them. Two of their young men are part of our worship team and a few weeks
ago the words to a song were on the screen in transliterated Arabic and we all
sang the chorus together. There are a number of darker skinned folks in the
pews, including a family who sits in front of us which is composed of a white
man, his wife from Dominica (they met when he was on a mission’s trip there),
and their four black adopted children from a family who were previously in
Texas. We are decidedly multi-cultural and that in my mind is a great strength.
Around the
church – Several
years ago we had the opportunity to purchase a large piece of land on the
outskirts of town, but we deliberately chose to remain in the restricted-parking
area in the center of town, stating that’s where our “Samaria” was located. We
operate the food bank for the town and each person who comes through the building
every two weeks is accompanied by a volunteer – not only to assist the person
in choosing a balanced cart of foods (rather than just loading up on one kind),
but to get to know the person and to minister to them. In order to serve
inner-city families where all the adults in the house are employed, we operate
an after-school program for the students – picking up the students at the
school just a few blocks away. Because of our long-standing relationship with
this school, we were invited to send volunteers to oversee the students after
lunch while their teachers get a well-earned break. The school is more than
willing to partner with a church because they know that we care! These are just
a few examples of how we have reached out to our community.
Around
the world – there
are many churches in the US who do not have well-developed mission’s programs.
Perhaps they are too small, perhaps they are large “mega churches” who are centered
around a dynamic pastor who is quite well-paid. When we began attending nearly
50 years ago the church had five missionary families – two in Venezuela, one in
Morocco, one in Zaire, and one in India. Three of them were families who grew
up in the church, but the other two were from elsewhere and only associated
with our church because we had purchased a home right across the street which
we made available to a family who was home on their periodic furlough
(missionary families back then tended to serve a 4-year term, then spend 1-year
back in the US meeting with their supporters, etc.). But because of our
relationship with the two families from elsewhere, when they retired as
missionaries both of them chose to purchase their retirement home in our
community and to serve their retirement years with us. The same was true with
our pastors as they retired – rather than retire to elsewhere, they remained
with us and became part of our congregation. We were “family” to them.
About 30
years ago we began a missions-focused program for teens. In their first year
they could participate in a weekend ministry. In their second year they could
participate in a week-long, US-based ministry (perhaps a VBS program at one of
the smaller churches in our denomination that did not have the necessary
resources), then in their third year they could participate in a 2-week-long
missions ministry outside of the US.
So where
are we today? We have a total of 7 missionary families, 2 in Germany and one
each in Mexico, Jamaica, Czech Republic, Venezuela, and Zambia. All but the one
family in Venezuela are members of our church, and that family are an
indigenous family serving in the church begun 50+ years ago by one of our
missionaries there. The wife of that former missionary now lives here in the US,
attends our church, and is the contact person for that church in Venezuela. Several
of these missionary families are products of that teen program from 30 years
ago.
Those
missionaries are very much a part of our church, and we get regular videos from
each one that show the tremendous work that they are all doing on our behalf.
But that is still not enough. As I am writing this, we have a team of people finishing
up a week-long trip to a Muslim country looking at ways that we can have a
presence in a country that is generally hostile to Christians.
Political
Implications
My brother
has a lot to say in the political arena which I will not repeat here. But I
encourage you to read it (link is up above). He ends with these closing
statements:
I
believe that there is true truth that can be found in God’s word, the
Bible. But most people have abandoned any hope of knowing such truth, and I
believe that America is suffering for it. Pray that the President and other elected
officials will seek after this true truth that we can find in the Bible.
The
individuals who run for various offices in this country, from President and on
down to local officials, are not perfect. They all suffer from various types of
imperfections, just as I do. When there are elections, I study the issues, I
study how the various candidates have done in the past and what they say in
their campaigns (and often their past actions are quite different than their
current campaign statements), then I vote for the individual who I believe
would do best. I do not vote for perfection. One might rightly say that I vote
for the “lesser of two evils”. Then, as their term progresses, I will answer
various surveys that I would hope might have some measure of influence on them.
It's unfortunate
that so many of us live in “echo chambers” where whatever ideas we have are
multiplied by the voices around us that reinforce what we say. Those surrounding
our politicians, either by their choice or by the choice of the politician,
tend to be people who are “yes men” who are part of those echo chambers. So
making change is very hard and really seeing things from someone else’s perspective
is difficult.
Not voting
is simply abdicating and letting the views of others count instead of mine. And
so I participate by voting. But my responsibility does not end there, I
pray! I pray without ceasing. I pray that whatever the politician is
making decisions on will end up being a decision that is God-honoring. It doesn’t
matter whether the politician is a Republican or a Democrat. I will pray for
whomever is making a decision that he/she will end up honoring God. And it
doesn’t matter if they make that decision because they are also a Christian
like me, or simply because they see the value in those decisions that happen to
be God-aligned.
So if
there is any value in this post, I ask that you join me in prayer. Living in
PA, that means for me that I pray for a President (who happens to be a
Republican), I pray for senators (who happen to be Democrats), I pray for our
governor (Democrat), state legislators (Republican), and local officials (Republican).
Pray with me! Get yourself aligned with God!
